Civility No Moore

Tax Deception:  The Trump surrogates were out in force over the weekend putting their spin on the House and Senate tax plans.  Budget Director Mick Mulvaney dismissed any criticism that making corporate tax cuts permanent while allowing individual cuts to sunset at the end of ten years was a problem of priorities or optics. Taking a page from former presidential candidate Mitt Romney who once famously said that corporations are individuals, he instead blamed the approach on the vagaries of the Senate’s arcane rules.  By rules he means that Republican leadership has decided to push forward with tax reform without any input from Democrats and in order to do that and avoid the need for the sixty votes they could never get without a bipartisan plan they are following the more constraining reconciliation rules. Still he couldn’t explain why the individual tax cuts were the ones that disappear over time.  Steve Mnuchin response to this concern was truly hair raising.  He said no one should worry about the individual tax cuts going away, because in ten years when they are due to expire, President Pence will make sure that they are renewed. President Pence, he really said that.  As to those fifty votes that Republican leadership will need in the Senate, they may still be elusive.  Senator Susan Collins says that she has several problems with the current Senate plan.  First and foremost, she isn’t pleased with the elimination of the Obamacare individual mandate.  She also wants more benefits skewed to the middle and lower class, she wants the tax rate on higher income people to remain at 39.6% and she would prefer a higher tax on corporate profits.  Trump seems not to understand that he needs every vote he can get and so he has all but written off ever getting Arizona Senator Flakes vote.  After Flake was overheard on a “hot mic” saying that the Republican party is “toast” if it becomes the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, Trump responded by tweet, of course, saying “Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on ‘mike’ saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is toast.”  It’s worth noting that Flake, despite all of his criticism of Trump, generally votes with him, so further antagonizing him is probably not the way to insure passage of tax reform.  The real action, arm twisting and compromise on tax reform legislation will heat up after Turkey day.     

Sexual Perversions:  Trump will get another chance to practice his pardoning skills on Tuesday at the  traditional Turkey pardoning ceremony assuming he sticks to the script and doesn’t punish the Turkeys for choosing to stay at the luxurious Willard Hotel instead of his local Trump Dump International.  Though Trump hasn’t pardoned Alabama’s Roy Moore, he’s pretty much keeping out of the Alabama fray, following the instructions of his Mr. Outside Steve Bannon.  Budget guy Mulvaney defended President Trump’s silence on the sexual misconduct claims against Moore by saying the president “doesn’t know who to believe.”  Senator Susan Collins does believe Moore’s accusers and was quick to remind everyone that she never supported Moore in the first place given his past history of discrimination and Muslim bashing.  The three biggest Alabama newspapers concur with Collins, they are urging voters to “stand for decency, reject Roy Moore,” and send the message that Alabamians aren’t going to support a child molester.  With a banner headline that appeared on the front page of their papers the Alabama Media Group also endorsed Doug Jones, pointing out to readers that he was the type of moderate Democrat who could wield power in the Senate because of his middle of the road positions.  They compared him to other red states Democrats including West Virginia’s Senator Manchin and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp.  They also told their readers not to be concerned about Jones’ liberal views on abortion rights by saying that a women’s right to choose would remain the law regardless of who Alabama puts in the Senate. One can only hope that they are right about that.  Senator Al Franken is still a senator but he didn’t have a particularly great weekend.  He got the full Saturday Night Live treatment, particularly scorching given his past membership in the SNL club.  His appearance was cut out of the Mark Twain tribute to David Letterman that will be aired tonight on PBS.  Still Franken, who asserts that his harassment of Leann Tweeden, was a one time thing, doesn’t plan to resign. That’s okay with Tweeden who says that she came forward to shed light on the problem and doesn’t want him to step down from office because “she thinks he does a lot of good things in the Senate.”  One person who is probably enjoying watching Franken twist in the wind is Attorney General Sessions, who blames Franken for calling him out on all of his “Russian indiscretions.”  When asked about all of this Hillary Clinton called for accountability and said that Franken’s apology for his inappropriate behavior and his willingness for a Congressional ethics investigation into that “is the kind of accountability I’m talking about. I don’t hear that from Roy Moore or Donald Trump.”  She also pushed back at Senator Gillibrand’s comment that her husband should have stepped down by saying “I don’t know what she was trying to say.”  It’s not like Bill Clinton got off easy, Hillary nearly killed him and he was impeached.    

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Over the weekend the focus was also on publicist Rob Goldstone’s interview with The Guardian and his impending trip to the US, Hope Hick’s upcoming interview with Special Counsel Mueller and Jared Kushner’s inability to be frank with anyone who asks him any questions or requests him to provide any information.  As if this wasn’t enough, late yesterday ABC revealed that Mueller has sent a subpoena to the Justice Department requesting that they turn over documents related to Trump’s firing of former FBI Director Comey, Attorney General Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Trump’s campaign, and emails and other records of communications between DOJ officials and their counterparts at the White House.  In all likelihood this is part of Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice. For his part Jeff Sessions may be getting close to the edge. Last week before starting a planned speech to the conservative Federalist Society he “mischievously” asked if Ambassador Kislyak or any other Russians were in the room, the crowd of likeminded collusion skeptics roared with laughter at his humor. As to Goldstone, the disheveled chunky guy who arranged the meeting between Don Jr and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, his spin is that the reaction to his email about the meeting was overblown.  He claims he was just trying to do a friend who just happened to be one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs, a favor and that he came up with the idea to hold out the lure of Hillary emails to help Natalia get her foot in the Trump revolving door all by himself. Hope Hicks probably shouldn’t make anything up during her upcoming Mueller interview. Her months of preparation won’t help much if the wily Mueller has learned something she tries to hide from one or more of the other people he has already interviewed.  Kushner’s lawyers responded to news that he failed to admit to being aware of WikiLeaks outreach to the campaign through dim light bulb Don Jr by saying that he can’t be expected to answer questions that aren’t more specific.  Fresh off his success representing New Jersey’s Senator Menendez, his lawyer Abbe Lowell asserted that Kushner should be treated like a hero for rebuffing a meeting request from Putin oligarch and crime boss Alexander Torshin.  All that other stuff, like deceptively filled out forms, deceptive testimony, not to mention his habit of showing up at fancy events while refugees are being hung out to dry and heath care is being dismantled, should be ignored because he really is a national treasure.

The Last Word:  Like it or not Trump probably does deserve some credit for helping the three UCLA basketball players who got caught shoplifting during their trip to China.  Trump’s “warm” personal relations with his good buddy Xi may not do much to improve world peace or fix trade problems but it did come in handy for the players.  Still he seems to have met his match in LaVar Ball, the outspoken father of one of the players.  The two squabbled over the weekend after Trump took umbrage at Ball who responded to a question about Trump’s involvement in springing the boys from hard time in China by saying “Who? What was he over there [on the Asian trip] for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.”  Not one to take the high road Trump responded “I should have left them in jail.”  And so it goes, civility from the top.